The Bible and Culture

January 1970 Archives

In God’s Kingdom…. The architect is greater than the architecture The artist is greater than the art The singer is greater than the song The playwright is greater than the play The poet is greater than the poetry The person […]

My latest book, which comes out on Feb. 15th, and can be ordered now at Amazon deals with the issue of the sorry state of worship in the Protestant Church these days, with much of what passes for worship being […]

In the wake of Tom Wright’s recent book on Justification and righteousness, the discussion has once more become vibrant and even volatile in some quarters. One of the major things that actually seems lacking in these discussions is a consideration […]

http://www.brazospress.com/Book.asp?isbn=978-1-58743-274-3 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/isbn=1587432749/bakerbookhouseA A major part of the deprogramming that is needed for Christians in the West has to do with having a critical approach to capitalism. The Bible does notpresent us with either communistic or capitalistic options when […]

Behold the Parthenon— in Nashville. Who knew? Yes there is a life size replica of the Parthenon built in 1898 for an Exposition and refurbished in the last ten years. Built to the exact specifications of the original, complete with […]

In the should have been in this quiz category are of course many artists and groups, for instance Paul Simon, pictured above in his younger days. We’ve now reached the home stretch, the last ten choices, and there were some […]

http://www.brazospress.com/Book.asp?isbn=978-1-58743-274-3 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/isbn=1587432749/bakerbookhouseA One of the more persistent myths about money that circulates in some Christian circles goes like this…. Myth Five: ‘Money is the root of all evil’ hence the nick name ‘filthy lucre’ or unrighteous mammon’. Ergo, it’s better […]

There were some deliberate no brainers thrown into the mix in this quiz, and the responses sometimes reflect this. A healthy majority of you picked Joni Mitchell at no. 11, and understandably so since her ouevre is much more considerable, […]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/isbn=1587432749/bakerbookhouseA http://www.brazospress.com/Book.asp?isbn=978-1-58743-274-3 Part of deprogramming yourself from the culture of excess involves decreasing the amount of waste in your life. Of course part of this involves decreasing your carbon footprint– creating less carbon waste by driving more fuel efficient vehicles […]

There they are the Liverpudlians, looking young and fresh faced. Who knew that folk like them, building on the legacy of Elvis and others, would change the world— not merely the musical tastes of the world, but the culture of […]

I saw it yet again just last week– yet another example of extremely dangerous driving caused by drivers using hand held cellphones. But it is hardly just the driving issues that are problematic about cellphones. Consider the article in […]

CLASSIC ROCK AND FOLK ROCK QUIZ So you areseriously stranded on a desert island for 30 days, but the good news is, whileit does not have internet or cellphone connectability, what it does have is oneway time travel […]

Right by the famous Euphrates river in western Syria, by the Syrian city of Salhiye and near Turkey is the city of Dura, or as we know it, Dura-Europos, the home of the first Europeans (for the name comes from […]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/isbn=1587432749/bakerbookhouseA http://www.brazospress.com/Book.asp?isbn=978-1-58743-274-3 There are so many myths about tithing that it is hard to enumerate them all. One of the more popular ones is this—If you tithe, then God will necessarily bless you far more than you have given. This […]

Geoffrey Studdert-Kennedy was not, by classic standards a great poet. But as a Chaplain in WWI who saw everything in France in the Maginot line he reflected long and deep not just on human beings inhumanity and cruelty to other […]

January is normally the dead zone for movies, but somehow this year it has turned into theological movie month what with The Edge of Darkness at the end of the movie with Mel Gibson playing an avenging angel of a […]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/isbn=1587432749/bakerbookhouseA http://www.brazospress.com/Book.asp?isbn=978-1-58743-274-3 Discretionary spending. Its an odd phrase. It suggests a person who has more money than they really know what to do with. But in fact most of the people who are reading this do have at least some […]

Hard on the heels of devastating tropical storms in 2008 which reaked havoc on the shores of Haiti comes now a 7.0 earthquake followed by a 5.9 aftershock leaving huge swaths of the poorest nation in the western hemisphere in […]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/isbn=1587432749/bakerbookhouseA http://www.brazospress.com/Book.asp?isbn=978-1-58743-274-3 Myth Three: If we are just sincere enough in our asking, or simply pray long and fervently enough, God is bound to give us what we ask for. This whole approach to prayer seems to see prayer […]

You learn a lot about a culture by how it treats its dead, and indeed how it approaches death. This post will not be an historical survey of the practices and approaches of differing cultures. Rather I would like to […]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/isbn=1587432749/bakerbookhouseA http://www.brazospress.com/Book.asp?isbn=978-1-58743-274-3 Most of us by now are familiar with the tried and true joke about the difference between an offering and a sacrifice. The story goes that a hen and a pig are having a conversation early one morning […]

Perhaps you’ve never met a Youpper. Perhaps you’ve never been there either— to the upper peninsula of Michigan, where beer freezes at football games in the late fall. Youpper’s are a hardy lot. They can easily give Green Bay Packer […]

CHAPTER THIRTY: ABIDING TRUTHS The meal on Wednesday evening was not elaborate, and the mood was more somber than celebratory. After two days of confrontation with authorities and some people in the crowds, the disciples wondered what could […]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/isbn=1587432749/bakerbookhouseA http://www.brazospress.com/Book.asp?isbn=978-1-58743-274-3 Money is one of those rare subjects that almost everyone has opinions on, including most Christians. And of course there are so many cliches about money—‘money can’t buy you love’ being a familiar one thanks to the Beatles. […]

Does this picture describe your current precipitous financial situation? Well, fear not, just in time for 2010, there is now a Biblical guide to what to do about this situation. The title of the book is Jesus and Money. A […]

Meet Dionysius Exiguus, or as I prefer to call him Denny the Dwarf. He was a Roman monk who lived in the 6th century A.D. and somewhere around 545 as a chronologist and scholar he decided to try and properly […]

Guns and Religion--- Enough is Quite EnoughI was sitting at the traffic light when a pickup pulled up next to me. On the back of the cab window was a bumper sticker saying 'Guns and religion. Now more than ever.' Then I found the picture you see above, and then this one ...

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About Ben Witherington on The Bible and Cultutre

Bible scholar Ben Witherington is Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary and on the doctoral faculty at St. Andrews University in Scotland. A graduate of UNC, Chapel Hill, he went on to receive the M.Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Durham in England. He is now considered one of the top evangelical scholars in the world, and is an elected member of the prestigious SNTS, a society dedicated to New Testament studies.